This story is set in the world of Breaking Silence by Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin, a new entry in the SERRAted Edge series, out in February. Mercedes Lackey is the New York Times best-selling author of the Bardic Voices series and the SERRAted Edge series, the Heralds of Valdemar series, and many more. She's the coauthor of the contemporary metahero SF series The Secret World Chronicle. Among her popular Baen titles are The Fire Rose, The Lark and the Wren, and also The Shadow of the Lion and Burdens of the Dead with Eric Flint and Dave Freer. She lives in Oklahoma.
Cody Martin is a coauthor with Mercedes Lackey of five other books in the metahero saga The Secret World Chronicle, including entries Invasion, World Divided, Revolution, Collision, and Avalanche. He is also the coauthor of the previous entry in The SERRAted Edge series, Silence. Martin is an avid gamer, but spends his extra time chained to a computer, writing. Originally from Scottsdale, Arizona, he currently resides in Florida.
This entire weekend was going to completely suck for Wanda. She felt as if it was a certainty, and the gloomy weather—normally a comfort, especially for a pale specimen like herself—wasn’t helping the way she had hoped it would. She was stuck in Silence, more so than usual, while the rest of the gang was in Wolfe’s Neck State Park enjoying a weekend camping and LARPing event. Even Jake and Riley had come out for it, which had surprised the lot of them. Ever since the events at the Blackthorne Manor, over the course of their junior year, Jake and Riley both had sort of retreated a little bit from the group. They still came to play at the Dungeons and Dragons—or whatever weird tabletop role-playing game Seth had scrounged from Ebay or mail order over the course of the week—but didn’t really hang out much outside of that. I mean, I totally get being weirded out by monsters and elves and monster elves, and having to fight all of them with iron blades and weaponized caffeine. Not exactly the sort of extracurricular activities that the Perfect Couple, or any of us, were at all prepared for.
But being all alone—left out—sucked majorly. She didn’t want to resent the others—not even Jake and Riley, despite their withdrawal after the battle at the Manor—for their fun, but it had grown increasingly hard to stand the loneliness after they all left Thursday night. Even Tim had gone! He’d closed the shop, saying he needed a break, to volunteer as the ride and chaperone for the entire group so everyone could go.
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